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Oxygen usability icon survey

oxygen-icons.org — OpenUsability.org has prepared an icon survey about Oxygen icons. Participating will help designers to find usability issues with the icon design development.

Who dugg this? Made popular Apr 19, 2007

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  • NJHewitt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+35Direct link to the survey : http://test.openusability.org/UCCASS/survey.php?sid=43

    To be fair, the blog the digg submission links to is an Oxygen developer's blog, and has some interesting and relevant content in other entries.
  • Pfhor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+29The more people who take this and are *not* currently prospective users is better. Oxygen shouldn't be a theme built around metephors that make sense only to existing KDE users, it should use metaphores that make sense to everyone.

    Icons are important in gaining new users, KDE needs to be accessable to everyone if it wishes to gain new users.
  • h0ly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22They should have added a "that's confusing" checkbox somewhere.
    Example: the lock-up, shutdown and change-user icons... I answered correctly, but they had me starring in confusion for about 3 seconds. That's a sign that those icons are not intuitive for me, so I'd like to feed this information along in the survey.

    Do they actually measure the response time for each question? It could have a similar effect.
  • pinetree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20They need an option that says "I'm tired of leaning forward and squinting to figure out these icons because they are too small and too low-contrast." Especially for the various document icons near the end. pretty != functional
  • d0odx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Take this survey if you have time. The larger the data set the better the decision.
  • bluetytanium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Guys, I think I got an A+.
  • ricodued, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11airmind:

    But saying "none of the above" is much more useful than just picking the one you think sucks the least. Just like the original poster pointed out, the change user/lock/shut down icons were VERY confusing. The only one I knew for sure what it did was the shutdown button. On the others I had to pick my best guess. To them, a "Uhhh none" option would be far more useful, feedback-wise.
  • penumbra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I agree, they needed a 'none of the above' choice.

    Also, I found that in some of the categories there was one patently obvious 'right' answer, rather than a few different icons which might feasibly be chosen between as a kind of opinion, which I thought was a bit strange.

    Also also, there was one of the 'select all of the things which are...' questions where I spent a long time finding any of them which said 'tarball' to me; and then one of the others (wp document, I think?) which was low enough contrast with others that I had to slow down to pick them out.

    I'm happy that they're doing a usability study, but I'd like to offer some feedback about their icon choices.
  • ericesque, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Wow. I had high hopes for this Oxygen set... I've seen some of the other work done by a few of the main artists.

    Unfortunately, I have to say I'm glad I use Gnome and have the Tango icon set available. Oxygen feels like it took
    the worst of Vista and the worst of Mac icons and tossed it in a blender with an ugly stick.
  • Anidash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Well I took the survey and have to be honest, they were a bit difficult to see against the white background. They need to use warmer colors in my opinion.

    Aside from that only the spreadsheet icon I couldn't figure out. None of them looked to me as a reference of a document for a spreadsheet application.
  • arrenlex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I definitely agree with you about those icons. They were a 'wtf' moment and the survey had to reprimand me for leaving the question blank. Why can't a lock desktop icon have a lock on it?
  • democracysucks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I know everyone's super excited about these new icons, but really, they do nothing for me. They're nothing fantastic, although they *are* leaps and bounds better than the current default icons which are just...horrid. Anyway, I'm sticking with NouveXT.
  • sishgupta, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13wordpress FTL
  • antiNeo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I agree. They really need to do some pixel pushing by hand to get those 16x16 document icons into shape. Not only are they low contrast, they look like crap.
  • ptFoe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Pity he uses wordpress. I hope this poor decision doesn't reflect his Icon creating ability.
  • Oxygen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My Icons are very usable .
  • airmind, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6There is no correct choice They want to know to which icons the user identifies more to each action.
    KDE right now is very confusing with a lot of icons which could mean a lot of things. Just think about the back button of the book reader. You would need to hover the mouse on it to see what it does, while the best option would be for the icon to uniquely identify each action.
  • franksands, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In the 'select all of the things which are...' section, there were some of them I left all the options blank, because I thought none of them were appropriate.
  • djh816, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9***** wordpress.
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10One thing's for sure: if you need a survey to tell if your ***** is ***** up, your ***** is ***** up.
  • arrenlex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Agreed... other than the spreadsheet, I left those two blank.
  • shanesemler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why, what's the problem with it?
  • tompahoward, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2damn! F. :(
    I should study more next time
  • shanesemler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What does WP have to do with anything?
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"They want to know to which icons the user identifies more to each action."
    Then still an option "none of the above" would have been good. We now get icons based on guessing?
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Pfhor then this test has failed already. I have used KDE ages ago so I am fresh to this icon set. Yet in several cases "none of the above" would have been the right choice to me. If only that option was available.

    With the file icons I just skipped them all because when I have to guess hard, to me it means they are unusable.

    Finally, let's not forget what people guess an icon does is largely based on what they have trained that such an icon does.
  • motang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1too bad I can't bury you ***** comment more than once!
  • cmorrell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree completely. More than once I found myself thinking, "If this weren't in the context of a survey I'd have no idea which to choose."
  • patpi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ktorrent icon from Oxygen set is just ugly as *****... It must be changed
  • Fergy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1so true
  • sivadnitsuj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21) I use and I love KDE (which made some points of the quiz seem odd, as they felt like trick questions.. i.e. pick the "konqueror" icon)
    2) I wholly support this effort, finished the quiz and hope you all do as well.

    3) did anyone else find it amusing to find the following on the first page of a web-based usability survey: "Note: please don't use the BACK or FORWARD button of your browser." (especially when one or two of the questions were back-forward related)

    [and thank you to NJHewitt for the direct link.. the original link was jacked]
  • thecmgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Those icons were tiny as well. I'm sure that was the point - to see what icons work best at small sizes - but I ended up trying to zoom my screen for a better look.
  • cpugeek2214, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That Earth on question 10 looked strangely familiar to the FF Earth.
  • tzone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1wtf was up with question 15 16 and 17
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3did it, it was a junk test. In some cases none of the options seemed correct to me. An option "None of the above" would have been wonderful. Has also little to do with usability, it's more: which icons have you been programmed to use for the past years for this task.

    And WTF! a usability test that won't let you use your browser correctly (forward/backward)...

    They have a lot to learn at open usability IMNSHO.
  • arrenlex, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Er, wrong reply.
  • chubbymidget, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Looks more like a Wordpress usability survey that failed
  • mejason69, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I second that!!
  • defectDS, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2"Which icon would you click to go to the home page in the browser?"

    *clicks the icon with a little home on it*

    I mean COME ON!
  • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2The server seems to be down at the moment, but do bear in mind that those who take the survey do not necessarily align with the prospective users of KDE 4.

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